Reporting a shooting war, no matter how historic or dramatic the conflict, involves less glory than sheer danger. Last week, on the first day of the Israeli invasion of Lebanon, TIME Photographer Barry Iverson was heading south on the coast road between Damur and Sidon when he was caught in an Israeli naval bombardment. An exploding shell wounded him severely in the leg. In shock from the loss of blood, he was taken to a Palestinian hospital, then transferred to the American University Hospital in Beirut, where his leg was surgically pieced together and encased in a steel skeleton cast. At week's end doctors were hopeful of a full recovery.

When the hostilities began, Beirut Bureau Chief Roberto Suro was on vacation in Athens, Greece. Quickly, he headed back to Lebanon, ordinarily a 90-min. flight but now, with Beirut's airport closed, a grueling, scrambling 2-1/2 day ordeal. Middle East Bureau Chief William Stewart, returning to Beirut from an overnight visit to Syria, drove along the steep, twisting Damascus Highway. "As Bureau Driver Salim Karami and I went along the narrow road," he recalled, "we were constantly forced to the side to make way for the Syrian 1st Armored Division to pass through to Lebanon's Bekaa Valley." Two days later, TIME Cairo Bureau Chief Robert C. Wurmstedt, with the Beirut airport still shut down, hired a taxi for the three-hour drive from Damascus, dodging Syrian tanks on the ground and hearing Israeli jets overhead. Reaching the Lebanese capital, he found a city filled with rumors, refugees and fear.

Jerusalem Correspondent David Halevy was in Washington D.C., while TIME Photographer David Rubinger was on assignment in Spain. But both hurried back to Israel to join TIME'S Robert Slater, who was covering the political action in Jerusalem. Within hours they were in the battle zone. Rubinger photographed Halevy interviewing Israeli Defense Minister Ariel Sharon at a forward military command post. One reporter found himself in the right place, right from the start. TIME'S Leroy Aarons had been dispatched protectively by Jerusalem Bureau Chief David Aikman to Metulla, Israel's northernmost town. On Sunday morning, one of the three main waves of the Israeli invasion force came rumbling through Metulla.

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